Jeane Freeman says the challenge for her successor is to make the welfare pledges ‘real for people’.
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Jeane Freeman was until last week the Scottish government’s minister for social security, responsible for delivering Scotland’s first devolved welfare system. As she succinctly put it, in an interview that took place just prior to her promotion to health secretary: “My job is the creation of a public service that currently does not exist, and I’ve got to do that in three years.”

A landmark bill that builds the legislative framework for the new welfare system received royal assent in April after months of intense scrutiny, moulded by genuine cross-party engagement and third-sector expertise, alongside the experience of thousands of ordinary Scots canvassed in a countrywide consultation. The new act radically differs from the UK government’s approach: for example, it recognises social security as a human right; offers automatic split payments of universal credit to protect women’s financial autonomy; and guarantees that the private sector will not carry out disability assessments.

Scotland recognises social security as a human right

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But Freeman is mindful that the next challenge – now facing her successor Shirley-Anne Somerville – is to ensure that legislative pledges to base the new welfare system on dignity, fairness and respect run through it in practice like a stick of rock. “The principles were really important to have on the face of the bill,” she says, “but if that’s where they stay then they’re just warm words. They need to be made real for people.”

A charter will be co-written with people who have personal experience of the benefits system stating how they can expect to be treated and what they can do if that does not happen. It will be approved by parliament “to give it a status that distinguishes it from just another bit of paper that an agency sticks on its wall”, says Freeman.

Perhaps the most visible change will be the absence of security guards in the new agency’s offices: other humanising aspects will include the availability of private spaces, comfortable seating and ease of access to disabled toilets.

Delivery of the 11 benefits that are being wholly transferred begins this summer, with a 13% increase to carer’s allowance to raise it to the level of jobseeker’s allowance. The new powers, part of the package promised to the Scottish parliament after the 2014 independence referendum will affect 1.4 million people. But it still accounts for just 15% of Scotland’s total benefits bill.

“I firmly believe it is not the Scottish parliament’s job to mitigate the worst excesses of Westminster,” Freeman insists. A recent report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found high destitution rates in some Scottish cities, largely due to the UK welfare system’s botched rollout of universal credit. “We spend about £120m in ensuring no one has to suffer the effects of the bedroom tax. The Scottish welfare fund now has an element to cope with the welfare cap, so we do a fair amount to mitigate. But there has to be a point at which we are saying it is not our job to run around Scotland sticking plasters on chasms of difficulty that the UK government is causing.”

More immediately, Freeman points to the difficulties caused by the Department for Work and Pensions’ failure to meet deadlines to transfer crucial information about benefits and claimants. Her frustration boiled over at the SNP’s June conference when she told delegates that the DWP “couldn’t run a bath”, arguing that “we’re setting the pace and they aren’t matching it”, and that Scotland “comes bottom of their to-do list”.

She says that the Social Security (Scotland) Act’s founding principles are guiding the recruitment of the 1,500-strong workforce to staff the Dundee headquarters and second administrative site in Glasgow, along with at least another 400 spread across the country in local roles. ”We’ve been very clear and upfront in the adverts about what we’re looking for and it’s a feature we’ve tried to weave in to the selection process,” she says, adding that the Public and Commercial Services Union has made it clear that “if you don’t treat people [you employ] with dignity and respect then you can’t ask people to behave like that with others”.

“[Campaigners] have paid me and the government a huge compliment in that – against all their experience with the UK system, particularly around disability benefits – they have given us the benefit of the doubt that we mean what we say in doing things differently. It’s hard won [trust] and can be very easily lost.”

How to treat people on benefits with respect – a lesson from Scotland | Ruth Patrick

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Freeman was a senior political adviser to former Scottish Labour first minister Jack McConnell. She stood successfully as an SNP candidate for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley just two years ago, after becoming a prominent advocate for women’s voices in the 2014 campaign for independence.

Last week, in a sweeping cabinet reshuffle, Nicola Sturgeon asked Freeman to be her health secretary – a portfolio the first minister herself held for five years under Alex Salmond – after Shona Robison resigned following mounting pressure from opposition parties over the performance of NHS Scotland. It is one of the most difficult briefs in Holyrood as the service faces significant funding and recruitment problems.

Of the challenge, Freeman says: “I have a personal and family background in the health service, and I have nothing but admiration for every person who works in our NHS whatever their job is. There have always been challenges and demands on the NHS and that will continue.I will continue and build on the commitment and excellent work of Shona Robison, my predecessor.One of the successes of our health service is that people are living longer, and that puts different demands on it. So it is critical that we are, together, able to adapt and change to meet those demands.”